The Journal and Paintings

• Main Authors: Of Robert Hood, C. Stuart Houston
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Arctic; Northwest Passage; Cree indians; Northwest passage
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.1026.258; http://arctic.journalhosting.ucalgary.ca/arctic/index.php/arctic/article/download/2881/2858/

The expedition to the Arctic led by Sir John Franklin in 1819-22 was a major event in Britain’s resumed search for the Northwest Passage. The members of Franklin’s party were the first white men to travel along the mainland shores of arctic North America; in spite of extreme hardships, they discovered and mapped 675 miles of that coastline. The story of the productive but tragic journey, in which eleven out of twenty people perished on the return trek, is well known from the official account of Franklin (1823). One of the sources used by Franklin was the journal of a midshipman, Robert Hood, the only officer to die during that expedition. Hood’s original handwritten narrative has been made available to the author of this commentary, together with the paintings executed by Hood under the incredibly difficult conditions of the journey. Hood offers a well-written, very human and less formal version of the events which occurred up to the time the expedition reached the Coppermine, and also provides an important account of the life of the Cree Indians near Cumberland House. Hood’s journal and paintings have just been published.